


The Importance of Body Language

by Mix Stitch (Synph)



Series: Under the Sea and Stars [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV), The Little Mermaid - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-12
Updated: 2014-03-12
Packaged: 2018-01-15 10:30:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1301641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Synph/pseuds/Mix%20Stitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a bright side to everything, but Derek is having trouble finding one right now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Importance of Body Language

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SweetFanfics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetFanfics/gifts).



> The ever-wonderful Meeya and I did a fic trade and this is what came of one of her wonderful prompts (a request for more of the Mchalinski mer!Derek AU where Derek gets legs and goes through the process of acclimating to his new situation and learning to walk). It’s heavily inspired by The Little Mermaid and is actually pretty angsty stuff coming from me. *smooches Meeya’s face* <3

Having legs is… different.

Gone is the powerful length of tail that could get Derek from one end of the Hale clan’s territory to the other in no time at all.

In its place are two legs, as pale as Lydia’s own are but far less slender. Derek feels naked without his tail, without the patterns of black and dark blue scales that covered him from the waist down. He keeps glancing down at his new lower half as though expecting something different every time.

"This was a bad idea," Derek says to Lydia, keeping his voice low enough that the pounding surf nearly drowns out his words. "I can’t go home like this." He gestures at his newer, less graceful body with a scowl on his face and a faint tremor in his hands.

Unlike Derek’s broad back which has survived the spell with some of its scale patterns intact, his legs are bare of everything that would mark him as one of the heirs to the Hale clan and it stings. Being human, being weak enough that Lydia can (and has to) hold him steady against the waves battering their rocky perch just off the shoreline. “Look at me, Lydia! I look —”

Lydia claps one small hand over Derek’s mouth, silencing him before he can speak.

"You look human," she says firmly once she pulls her hand away, narrowing her green eyes up at Derek as though daring him to disagree with her. "Considering how you did this to fit in with your two new friends, I think you look fine." She smiles briefly and then nudges Derek with one slim shoulder. "Not as fine as me, perhaps, but fine enough for what you need to do."

Derek doesn’t take the bait that Lydia is all but dangling in front of him. Crossing his arms across his chest, Derek refuses to meet his friend’s eyes, choosing instead to look down at his bare legs with worry twisting his mouth and making his chest ache.

"What if they don’t want me? What if they don’t want me enough for Peter’s spell to work?"

The thought has possibly been running through Derek’s head since the moment that Lydia had towed his semi-conscious body up from the depths of his uncle’s lair.

No, Derek thinks to himself in an attempt to be honest with himself for once, it had been before that, from that first time that he saw Stiles sitting on the sand with Scott’s head in his lap and one strong hand carding through the other’s curly hair.

Derek had seen Scott and Stiles kissing before, had seen them do more than that in the early days before Lydia forced them to meet and ended Derek’s days of spying on the two humans in the early morning light. Somehow, seeing them like that, so tender without the need to kiss and roll around with each other on the sand, had hurt more than anything.

Peter adding a caveat to the spell’s workings did not help matters at all.

If both Scott and Stiles don’t want him, if they can’t tumble headfirst into the type of love that Derek has dreamed of for ages, then everything is lost.

His powers.

His home.

His family.

He’ll be a fish at the bottom of the ocean and worse, he’ll be a failure to everyone. Especially himself.

Beside Derek, Lydia sighs and brushes a damp bit of curly red hair behind one pointed ear. When she reaches out to rub at Derek’s back, he leans into the touch with a soft sigh and hunches over in a way that almost manages makes his large frame seem small beside her.

"Scott watches you often," Lydia says after several seconds of silence stretches tight between them. "I think he thinks you’re handsome and I know that Stiles likes talking to you. There’s that at least."

Derek scoffs, bitterness infusing the sound as well as the way that his eyebrows scrunch together.

"They’re happy together," Derek bites out. "I can’t intrude. Not on that."

Lydia drops her head against Derek’s shoulder hard enough that Derek winces.

"You have to," she says through gritted teeth, obviously kicking herself for not talking Derek out of his foolish plan in the first place. "Besides the fact that you  _want_  to, you need to do something if you don’t want to spend the rest of your life as a fish in your uncle’s lair.”

Derek huffs out a sigh, but then nods his head twice before turning to look at Lydia with brilliant blue eyes that aren’t at all unchanged by Peter’s workings.

"I know, Lydia," he confesses. "But where do I start?"

Lydia’s smile is wide enough and filled with enough sharp white teeth to make any other mer nervous, but Derek is used to Lydia’s predatory and pleased smiles and he responds predictably, smiling back at her as some of his previous confidence returns to him.

"First," Lydia says, making a grand gesture of it all with her slender wrists twisting over their heads, "We’ll get you some clothes and then, we’ll teach you to walk."

When Derek’s nose wrinkles at the thought, Lydia rolls her eyes at him. “Don’t make that face at me, Derek. I know enough about humans to know that a belt around your waist isn’t enough. We want them to fall for you, not for you to scare them away.”

Derek wants to frown at Lydia, but he settles for dipping his head with a sharp nod.

"Okay," he mutters, glancing at the siren sitting and smiling at him as though everything in the world is all right. "Do what you want with me."

"That’s the spirit, Derek," Lydia says, clapping her hands together loudly enough that a flock of seagulls cries out above their heads in tones that Derek recognizes belatedly as alarm. "I’ll have you presentable in no time."

*

After several attempts at walking end with Derek’s face slapping into damp sand, Derek finally starts to get the hang of it.

Stumbling around on the sand with one of Lydia’s arms looped around his waist to hold him up, Derek is so busy trying to learn how to keep himself upright that he doesn’t notice that they have company until he stumbles into said company.

Landing on flesh and bone instead of sand and bits of rock is so much more pleasant than his previous landings that Derek nearly forgets to be embarrassed when he recognizes the expanse of pale skin right under his nose as —

"Stiles," Derek blurts out, scrambling to his feet at a speed that nearly sends him tumbling backwards. Not even a moment later, Scott runs up to them and the sight of his shirtless chest as well makes Derek’s mouth go dry with a combination of want and worry. "I-I’m sorry. I —"

Stiles (like many of the people in Derek’s life he realizes) doesn’t let Derek get another word in edgewise. He rushes forward, one hand curled around Scott’s wrist above a bracelet of cowrie shells that had been a gift from Derek, and crowds around Derek and Lydia, looking them over with a critical gaze.

"What the hell did you  _do_?” The words and the tone Stiles speaks them in makes Derek bare his teeth and hiss, but then the young humans are there rushing forward and touching all the places where his scales are gone and only faded blue almost-bruises remain on his skin and Derek just —

Melts.

A little, at any rate.

"What happened, Lydia?" Scott whispers, dropping his voice low but not low enough that Derek can’t hear him.

Derek frowns again.

"I’m human now," he says at the same time that Lydia blurts out that, "the big guppy got turned into a human." His face warms with a blush that only seems to deepen as he gets two sets of appraising eyes fixated on his body.

"You can’t go home like that, can you?" Stiles asks, falling to Derek’s sides where his secondary gill slits would be. "You can’t breathe underwater now. Do you even have some place to go?"

When Derek shakes his head, Scott purses his lips in a brief frown. “You can stay with me,” he says in a decisive tone. “My mom has the room and besides, this way Stiles and I can pick your brain about what it’s like to live underwater.”

Lydia not-so-subtly shoves Derek forward.

 ”He’d love that,” she says for him. “Take good care of him boys!”

She heads toward the water after that and Derek knows that she’s going to do the one thing that Derek couldn’t: tell his mother about what he’s done to himself. Somehow, the thought of disappointing Talia doesn’t chill Derek to the bone anymore. Not with Scott and Stiles’ hands on his skin.

"We will," Stiles and Scott call out at the same time.

Once Lydia has dived into the ocean and left them behind, Scott glances up at Derek.

"Come on," he says with a smile. "Let’s see if we can find you some more clothes before we fatten you up. You’re in luck, Derek; it’s my turn to cook while my mom’s out at work."

Stiles’ mouth drops open with alarm. “Hey!”

Once Derek starts laughing, he can’t stop.

Maybe, just maybe Peter’s spell won’t be such a bad thing after all.


End file.
